Monday, January 31, 2011

Every good story has a follow-up story. Usually at the expense of my personal pride. Case in point ...

It has been a semi-difficult eight days dealing with a wonky eye. It isn't all that bad. It still fogs up every few minutes but at least I know why. I have "The Mother Of All Floaters" impeding my vision. Still, a few blinks and maybe a little shifting of my eyes and it usually moves on for a few minutes. I repeat that venture about every twenty minutes or so and put it out of my mind. If this is my greatest health difficulty, well, I have no complaints.

And then last night happened.

I woke up from a sound sleep around three in the morning. Our bedroom is pretty dark. There are two windows facing the north. At the back of our rather shallow backyard is a tree line with wonderfully tall trees. The block the shining lights from the homes behind us. But we are one house removed from a major thoroughfare in the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis. So there is a dim light from street lights standing guard along that avenue. I opened my eyes and noticed more wonkyness as I turned over. A line. A non-moving line, this time across my right eye. It is my left eye that has been giving me problems and so this was new. I turned my eyes in each direction and the line stayed put. It did not move with my eyes. I moved my eyes up and down. Again, the line stayed in its stationary position.

Weird. This. Cannot. Be. Good.

I felt that sick feeling on the inside. The one you get when you realize that something outside of your control is happening. The feeling that tells you that you are going to have to go to the doctor like ... now. I was warned both at the emergency room and at my ophthalmologists office that if anything changes ... anything ... come back immediately. I dreaded the thought of waking Debbie and telling her that I had to return to the hospital in the middle of the night.

I pushed my head deeper into my pillow and sighed. I just wanted a minute to clear my mind before starting what would surely be a long medical journey on a day when Debbie and I both had pressing things on our agendas to accomplish.

My nose itched. I scratched it. What? I paused and then allowed my fingers to coast across my face. Indeed something was wrong. Something needed immediate attention. I often get a clogged head at night and before turning in I had plastered a "Breath Right" to my nose. The right side had come unstuck. It was sticking up. Pointing out. Directly across my line of sight.

The unmoving line that I was seeing was the narrow edge of the "Breath Right" as it jutted out about half an inch in front of my eye.